“The massive storm that swept through Israel over the weekend caused a great deal of damage to archaeological sites all along the Mediterranean coast, but also uncovered a an impressive statue of a woman between 1650 and 1800 years old in Ashkelon.”
Tag: 12.14.10
Off-Broadway Dracula Revival Fires Lead Actress
“The producers of the Off Broadway revival of Dracula fired their star actress Thora Birch on Friday, four days before the play’s first performance.” Her dismissal was reportedly due to disruptive behavior by her father during rehearsals.
The Funding Axe Falls in Birmingham (Though Not as Hard as It Might Have)
“Birmingham City Council is to slash its arts budget by almost £2 million a year over the next three years, with some companies having their funding cut by 50%.” The total reduction in city arts spending is around 16% rather than the 30% many had feared.
Why So Many Readers Like the Cliches in Genre Fiction
Laura Miller: “Chances are, [Martin] Amis’ strenuously inventive prose would strike them as too much work. … Such a reader, who is interested solely in the consumption of plot, favors the hackneyed phrase over the original” because she recognizes it immediately and so can consume more plot more quickly.
20th Century Opera’s Most Misunderstood Flop?
It was one of the highest-profile world premieres in opera history: Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, commissioned for the 1966 grand opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center. The audience cheered, but critics sneered or sniffed. “Was the world deaf? Music once perceived as 50 years behind the times now seems to have been written 40 years too early. Same notes, opposite impressions.”
Improvisation: What Happens in the Brain, and Where
A neuroscientist and a cognitive musicologist have been using fMRIs to find just which portions of the brain are particularly active – and which portions are switched off – when a performer is improvising.
Kenzaburo Oe Leads Shortlist for Man Asian Prize
The Nobel laureate’s novel The Changeling is one of ten finalists for the award for the best novel by an Asian writer in English. Also on the list is journalist Manu Joseph’s debut novel, Serious Men, which won The Hindu newspaper’s best fiction award last month.
Why Edward Hopper Is Confusing
Despite being in Europe in the 1920s, as the great revolutions in modern art were happening, “[his] mind was not blown by Cubism. He did not succumb to the excitement of any avant-garde. … Was he an ugly American, so wedded to simplistic imagery that the finer points of Cubism or abstract painting would have been over his head? Did Hopper rely on cliché because that was all he understood?”
Sirius Re-Signs Howard Stern, Signals Its Financial Health Improving
“Getting Stern to stick around removed one of the big question marks facing Sirius XM. The company, which has weathered a difficult two years of financial uncertainty, needed to keep Stern not only for his listeners but also to signal to the financial community that its momentum is continuing.”
Artist Responds To LA Museum Of Contemporary Art Painting Over His Mural
“It is censorship that almost turned into self-censorship when they asked me to openly agree with their decision to erase the wall. In Soviet Union they were calling it ‘self-criticism.’ [MoCA director Jeffrey] Deitch invited me to paint another mural over the one he erased, and I will not do that.”